The Sobibor Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance E-Book

Chris Webb

• Herausgeber: ibidem
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 1022

Beschreibung

2nd, revised and updated edition. With a Foreword by Jerry Steinberg

Leseprobe

ibidem Press, Stuttgart

For Freya, Cora, and Otto

Dedicated to Jules Schelvis and Thomas (Toivi) Blatt’

In loving memory of

Rita Beard

Taken from us too soon.

Table of Contents

Foreword

About the Author

Author’s Introduction

Chapter I ‘Aktion Reinhardt’ An Overview

Chapter II History of the Sobibór Death Camp

Chapter III The Arbeitsjuden Remember

Chapter IV The Jewish Survivors, Escapees and Victims—Roll of Remembrance

Survivors and Escapees A–Z

Roll of Remembrance—Poland and Other Countries A–Z

Roll of Remembrance—Holland A–Z

Roll of Remembrance—Greater German Reich A–Z

Selected to work at Sobibór for Outside Labor Camps A–Z

Chapter V The Perpetrators

Aktion Reinhardt—Leading Personalities

Sobibór Death Camp—Commandants

SOBIBÓR DEATH CAMP Garrison Listed in Alphabetical Order

SUPPORT STAFF

Chapter VI Post War Testimonies by SS-Men

Former SS Men Testimonies

Chapter VII Testimonies by Former Trawnikimänner

Chapter VIII The Author’s Visits to Sobibór

Trip to Poland 2002

Trip to Poland 2004

Illustrations and Sources

Drawings, Maps and Sources

Documents and Sources

Appendix 1 Alphabetical List of Ukrainian Guards—Sobibór

Appendix 2 Glossary of Nazi Terms

Appendix 3 Table of Equivalent Ranks

Appendix 4 Transports from Holland

Appendix 5 Transports from Slovakia

Appendix 6 Transports from the Greater German Reich

Appendix 7 The Sobibór Area Labor Camps

Selected Bibliography

Other Publications

Paper Correspondence

Archival Sources

Websites

Acknowledgements

Foreword

The Final Solution needed a number of converging elements to afford it the opportunity to come to fruition. Excuse the term ‘perfect storm’, a rather ironic term in this situation, but it is defined as a critical or disastrous event created by a powerful and unlikely concurrence or confluence of factors. With respect to the Holocaust, some of these major factors include the following:

Successive stages of discrimination, oppression, marginalization, and ghettoization, culminating in mass genocide of unimaginable proportions.

A megalomaniacal tyrant with obvious issues of unresolved rageful hatred, combined with a need to scapegoat, as well as a tremendous appetite for greed, power, and conquest. A strangely charismatic character totally bereft of any conscience or humanity.

A propaganda campaign that was enormous in scope and one in which all forms of resistance or even dissenting opinion were blocked, prevented, silenced and/or punished—most often by death. Paving the way were the Anti-Semitic influences and indoctrinations of the bogus ‘Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,’ and the perversion of evolutionary theory known as Social Darwinism, the schooling of German children, and the writings and orations of many other influences of the years before Nazism and during its heyday. All of these were aimed at breeding hatred and amplifying prejudice.

A collective low morale among the German people following Germany’s defeat in the First World War, aggravated by the crippling reparations it was forced to pay, the significant territorial concessions, as well as other terms of the Versailles Treaty. This led to bitter resentment which powered the rise of the Nazi Party.

A severe economic collapse with extraordinarily high levels of unemployment.

In line with the point above, is an often overlooked or minimized motivation for the ‘Final Solution’—that of avarice, grand theft, and opportunisms. There was an unprecedented confiscation of homes, land, businesses, and assets of every kind imaginable—including artificial limbs, gold teeth, hair and anything else that could be repurposed or otherwise utilized. The purpose, to finance their war effort, keep the military-industrial complex going, and enrich themselves. This illustrates that desperate people will often sacrifice their moral and ethical code when there are benefits and rewards to serve their selfish interests.

Like the parable of the blind men and the elephant—each examining the parts of it by feeling around and describing what seem to be quite disparate perspectives on the same animal—so too even among Holocaust scholars and researchers. They approach the subject from a wide variety of unique perspectives, and tend to narrow their focus because the Holocaust has so many facets. For example, some present biographical information about Hitler and his henchmen as their focus; some look at opportunisms the Holocaust within the context of geopolitics or social sciences. Some are concerned with demographics and the aggregation of statistics involving the numbers of those murdered. Some spend their time recording and documenting survivor testimonies, while others create timelines and deportation lists. Yet others compile databases and spreadsheets of victims. Some focus on the forensic investigation of extermination camps, while others study the Jewish resistance groups. And the list goes on!

Not surprisingly, and yet still surprisingly, there are those who focus on trying to deny or minimize the enormity of the Holocaust. My particular niche is leading the way, primarily on social media platforms and other online venues to combat Holocaust denial. In order to effectively achieve this I engage in extensive research to refute all of the highly regurgitated so called ‘challenges’ to the historicity of the Holocaust.

Imagine my joy and pleasure when my path crossed with that of Chris Webb, since his niche ties into my speciality in the sense that he pulls together a vast array of elements that all converge to create an amazingly accurate portrait of the Nazi extermination camps—their conceptualizations, planning, construction, organizing, staffing, operations, policies and procedures, and portraits of many perpetrators, as well as biographies of countless captives, victims and survivors. His works are truly a Holocaust denier’s nightmare.

All of this is meticulously compiled from a wide variety of highly trusted primary, secondary and tertiary sources from every perspective. Chris Webb fact-checks up front, so that you don’t have to. He proactively points out even minor inconsistencies in testimonies, dates and numbers to obviate the need for anyone else to ever had the need to do so. Anyone would be hard pressed to legitimately question anything. All too often we read different accounts of the same historical events and the narratives compete with each other for dominance. It is comforting to find none of that in Chris Webb’s books.

He even provides the reader with a collection of SS testimonies, wherein they attest to the crimes against humanity in which they had direct involvement. What could be more compelling and powerful than that? This begs the question of how we can possibly have people denying the Holocaust, when so many of the perpetrators not only confess to it, but spell things out in excruciating detail.

This truth-based reporting and writing, is sadly-enough—and all too often—giving way to a growing tendency to spin historical events and commentary to meet the presenter’s need to influence, persuade, and peddle their biases and agenda, rather than to impart fact-based, objective historical information. Even the presentation of nightly news is essentially becoming more and more opinion-based these days.

The subtleties in choosing certain words and phrases; the deliberate misuse of statistics, revising history, whitewashing or glorifying on the one hand, and demonizing on the other have become more commonplace than people realize.

Nowadays we see an incredibly fast-growing proliferation of all manner of propaganda videos and comments on social media by social influencers using these venues to shape public opinion—as the Nazis started to do in the 1930’s. To immerse oneself in that world is to see just how pernicious this is in inciting hatred through revisionism, widespread use of fallacious reasoning, inversions of truth, demonizing buzzwords, and intolerance of minority groups taken to its extreme—again reminiscent of what was done by the Nazis.

All that said, the reader of this book, as well as every other book by Chris Webb, will find it refreshing to be provided by the facts—the entirety of what is known about Sobibór in this case—and nothing but the facts.

There is no room for speculation or denial. This book is backed by converging evidence. Nothing is filled in, nothing is interpreted, nothing is meant to distort, mischaracterize, misinterpretat, or embellish. The only persuasion is that which is justified as a consequence of simply reading this book, it demands that people know it is a book of solid evidence, unbiased research and undeniable facts, and that they feel the compassion, empathy, outrage, and disgust over that was perpetrated at Sobibór, and that they use this as a lesson to caution all societies against any tendency to go down the dangerous steps that culminate in such massive crimes against humanity.

Jerry Steinberg

New Jersey, USA

November 2022

About the Author

Chris Webb was born on November 20, 1954, in Hillingdon, Middlesex, the youngest of three children. It was his father, Frederick John Webb, who started his passion for the Holocaust, during 1971 presenting him with the book by Gerald Reitlinger, ‘The Final Solution.’

Chris worked for the Post Office which later became Royal Mail from 1971, until 2011. He rose through the ranks starting as a Postal and Telegraph Officer on Windsor Counter, and ended his 39 year service as a Senior Manager. He worked at a number of places, mostly in the South East, and London Headquarters.

On his retirement from Royal Mail, he started working on his first book ‘The Treblinka Death Camp’, which was published in 2014. Chris Webb has now written a number of books on the Aktion Reinhardt death camps, as well as books on Auschwitz and Chelmno, all published by ibidem-Verlag in Germany.

In addition to his writing, and lecturing at a number of universities on the Holocaust, he has founded the Holocaust Historical Society website. He co-founded both the ARC website and the H.E.A.R.T. websites. He has also contributed to a number of television programmes by the BBC on the Holocaust such as Auschwitz: ‘The Final Solution’ and a number of programs for the ‘Who Do you Think You Are’ series. He has also contributed to the French Tv documentary ‘Annihilation.’ He has also participated in worldwide podcasts for the Ghetto Fighters House in Israel. He is also a member of the Treblinka Extermination Camp online group, and Tiergartenstrasse 4 Association

Chris is married to Shirley, and they have a daughter Heather, who is married to Mark. They have two beautiful daughters, Freya and Cora, cherished and much loved granddaughters of Chris and Shirley Webb.

Author’s Introduction

Sobibor 2004—The Author far left

This book is an important contribution to the history of Aktion Reinhardt and the Holocaust.

This publication follows in the footsteps of the outstanding book ‘Fotos Aus Sobibor,’ the collection of unique photographs taken in Sobibór from the private photograph album of Johann Niemann, the deputy commandant, published in 2020. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and that saying has never been more apt.

Thanks to the album we can now see what the death camp looked like, and the SS men who ran it. We can put names to faces we have read about for years. This book exposes the stark reality of Aktion Reinhardt, through carefully screened and selected photographs.

This book records some of the results of the police investigations about the camp. The English translations of the statements made by the former SS-Sonderkommando Sobibór personnel, many appearing in this setting for the first time. Indeed these statements are at the heart of this book, and the reader will learn a host of new things about Sobibór in great detail; about the layout of the camp, how it operated on a day to day basis, and descriptions by the former guards on their fellow partners in crime.

One major improvement over the first edition, is that sources are now provided. Both the Jewish Roll of Remembrance and the Perpetrators chapters are expanded and updated with new biographies and information. This publication marks the anniversary of eighty years since the revolt took place. This is an important milestone.

I must pay tribute here to the fantastic and dedicated work of Ena Pflanz, who has translated the bulk of the post-war statements, from German to English. I cannot thank her enough. Also worthy of mention is Georg Biemann, who also translated statements from German to English, as well as conducting painstaking research into a number of individuals such as Rudolf Beckmann, Franz Stangl, Richard Thomalla, and Josef Wolf.

Georg’s tireless research ended decades long of frustrating and often fruitless searches, in respect of Rudolf Beckmann. Indeed the uncovering of this complex and shrouded in mystery figure, is worthy of a book in its own right. We thought that we had tracked Beckmann down, only to find he was not born in Osnabruck as many eminent historians claimed, and that we had to search again. Thanks to the Bundesarchiv we were able to locate the real Rudolf Beckmann, who hailed from Buer, Gelsenkirchen. Without doubt Georg has considerably enriched this book, and I thank him for that from the bottom of my heart.

Regarding the post-war interrogation documents I must thank Rene Pottkamp from the NIOD—Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide studies in Amsterdam, Holland, for allowing me to use these post-war testimonies. This was crucial in providing the basis for this book, indeed the whole raison d’etre, for the second edition.

I am also very much in debt to my friends Jerry Steinberg, who has once again written the Foreword to this book and Anne-Marie Hoppitt who has taken on the role as editor. She has performed this role with enormous skill and dedication. I cannot thank her enough for all her brilliant efforts, in making this book the best it could be. She is a treasure. I must also thank Peggy Scolaro for starting to edit this work, but had to give it up due to personal reasons. She was very supportive and I wish her all the best.

I want to pay a special tribute to Sandy H. Straus. She has constantly pushed me to provide the best possible writings and research that I could manage. This has been achieved through our great friendship and her sharp understanding of the subject matter and technical details. I cannot thank her enough for all that she has done to support and review this book, and my other Holocaust research in general. She is ‘simply the best’, borrowing the title of a well-known song.

The testimonies, and indeed much of the content of the history of Sobibór death camp, owes much to the late Jules Schelvis, who was a survivor of Sobibór, deported there from Westerbork camp in Holland, during June 1943. Jules was selected to work in a Jewish Labor camp, whilst his wife Rachel and other members of her family were murdered in the gas chambers on arrival. I was fortunate to correspond with Jules Schelvis many times, but sadly never met him in person. Another Sobibór survivor I made contact with was Thomas Blatt. He was most helpful and I am indebted to him for his contributions.

I am extremely grateful to Aline Pennewaard who supplied me with a number of research material, which has aided my writings; particularly in respect of solving the true identity of Luka, and attempting to trace Inge, and her twin sister, as mentioned by Thomas Blatt, who was deported to Sobibór from Holland in May 1943. Despite our very best efforts we have been unable to trace her. Aline is without doubt a real jewel in the crown, and I cannot thank her enough.

It goes without saying that I want to thank everyone who has supported this work, especially my family who quietly let me pursue my research. I must thank my wife Shirley, our wonderful daughter Heather, her husband Mark, and our two lovely grandchildren Freya and Cora, and Otto the son of Ena.

Chris Webb

Whitehill,

October 14, 2022

Chapter I‘Aktion Reinhardt’An Overview

Aktion Reinhardt—also known as Einsatz Reinhardt—was the code name for the extermination of primarily Polish Jewry from the former Generalgouvernement and the Białystok area. The term was used in remembrance of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the co-ordinator of the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question’ (Endlösung der Judenfrage)—the extermination of the Jews living in the European countries occupied by German forces during the Second World War.

On May 27, 1942, in a suburb of Prague, Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, members of the Czech resistance, ambushed Heydrich in his car while he was en-route to his office in Prague from his home at Panenské Březany. Heydrich died from his wounds at Bulovka Hospital on 4 June 1942.1

Four days after his death approximately 1,000 Jews left Prague in a single train which was designated AaH (Attentat aus Heydrich). This transport was officially destined for Ujazdów, in the Lublin district of Poland, but the deportees were gassed at the Bełżec death camp in the far south-eastern corner of the Lublin District. The members of Odilo Globocnik‘s resettlement staff henceforward dedicated the murder program to Heydrich‘s memory, under the code name Einsatz Reinhardt.2

The head of Aktion Reinhardt was SS-Brigadeführer Odilo Globocnik; the SS and Police Leader of the Lublin District, who had been appointed to this task by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. At the Führer’s Headquarters in Rastenburg (a town in present day Poland known as Kętrzyn), Heinrich Himmler, Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger; Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer Ost, and Odilo Globocnik met at a conference on October 13, 1941, during which Globocnik was authorized to build a death camp at Bełżec. This was the first death camp built using static gas chambers. the first mass extermination camp in the East, which was Kulmhof (a town in present day Poland known as Chełmno) used gas vans from early December 1941.3

On January 20, 1942, at a villa in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, Heydrich organized a conference on the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question in Europe’. The conference had been postponed from December 8, 1941, as Heydrich wrote to one of the participants Otto Hoffman, it had been necessary to postpone the conference ‘on account of events in which some of the invited gentlemen were concerned’.4 This was an allusion to the massacres that had taken place in the East. Dr. Rudolf Lange, for example, had overseen the murder of Jews at Riga; these executions were notable as this was the first time German Jews from the Reich had been executed en-masse—in this case the Jews were from Berlin. Those who attended the Wannsee Conference included the leading officials of the relevant ministries, senior representatives of the German authorities in the occupied countries, and senior members of the SS, including Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo, and Adolf Eichmann, head of Department IV B4, the sub-section of the Gestapo dealing with Jewish affairs. Dr. Josef Bühler, Staatssekretär—who was representing Dr. Hans Frank, from the Generalgouvernement—demanded that the ‘Final Solution’ should be first applied to the Jews of the Generalgouvernement. This request was granted thus setting in train the mass murder program, which was later to be named as ‘Aktion Reinhardt.’

Odilo Lothario Globocnik was born on April 21, 1904, in Trieste, the son of an Austro-Slovene family, and was a construction engineer by trade. In 1930, he joined the Nazi party in Carinthia, Austria and after the banning of the Nazi Party in Austria in 1934, earned a reputation as one of the most radical leaders of its underground cells. In 1933, Globocnik joined the SS, which also became a prohibited organization in Austria in 1934, and was appointed deputy Party District Leader (Stellvertretender Gauleiter).5

After serving several short terms of imprisonment for illegal activities on behalf of the Nazis, he emerged as a key figure in the pre-Anschluss plans for Austria, serving as a key liaison figure between Adolf Hitler and the leading pro-Nazi Austrians.6

After the Anschluss of March 1938, Globocnik‘s star continued to rise and on May 24, he was appointed to the coveted key position of Party District Leader (Gauleiter) of Vienna.

His tenure was short-lived, however, and on January 30, 1939, he was dismissed from this lofty position for corruption, illegal speculation in foreign exchange and tax evasion—all on a grand scale.7

After demotion to a lowly SS rank and undergoing basic military training with an SS-Standarte, he took part with his unit in the invasion of Poland. Eventually pardoned by Himmler, who needed such unscrupulous characters for future ‘unsavoury plans’, Globocnik was appointed to the post of SS- und Polizeiführer Lublin on November 9, 1939. Globocnik had been chosen by the Reichsführer-SS as the central figure in Aktion Reinhardt, not only because of his ruthlessness, but also because of his virulent anti-Semitism.

In Lublin, Globocnik surrounded himself with a number of his fellow Austrians, SS-Officers like Herman Julius Höfle, born in Salzburg on June 19, 1911. Höfle became Gobocnik’s deputy in Aktion Reinhardt; responsible for personnel and the organization of Jewish deportations, the extermination camps and the re-utilization of the victim’s possessions and valuables. Höfle was later to play a significant role in mass deportation Aktionen in Warsaw and Białystok. Ernst Lerch from Klagenfurt became Globocnik‘s closest confidante and adjutant. Georg Michalsen, a Silesian from Oppeln, was another adjutant and he, too, participated with Höfle in the deportation of Jews from the ghettos in Warsaw and Białystok. Another, early member of this group was Amon Göth, who cleared the Tarnów, Kraków and Zamość ghettos, and later became the notorious commander of Płaszów Arbeitslager in Krakau.8

The headquarters of Aktion Reinhardt was located in the Julius Schreck Kaserne at Litauer Srasse 11, in a former Polish school close to the city centre in Lublin, where Höfle not only worked but lived in a small apartment. Julius Schreck was Adolf Hitler’s private chauffer; who had died of meningitis on May 16, 1936, and was given a state funeral.

Also located in Lublin were the buildings in which the belongings and valuables seized from the Jews were stored: the former Catholic Action (Katholische Aktion) building on Chopin Strasse, and in pre-war aircraft hangers on the Old Airfield (Alter Flug-platz) on Chelmska Street (Fabryczna Street in Polish) in the south-eastern outskirts of Lublin.9

Artificial limbs and medicines taken from the murdered Jews in the death camps were sent to the SS-Polizeiführerkommando Sportplatz in Lublin, which was under the control of Dr. Kurt Sickel. He was put on trial after the war for war crimes concerning the murders of American Prisoners of War at Malmedy, in the Ardennes, during the so-called ‘Battle of the Bulge’ in late 1944. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted and upon his release, he resumed his family practice in Cologne.10

The most notorious and fearsome member of Aktion Reinhardt was SS-Obersturmführer/Kriminalinspektor Christian Wirth, the first commandant of Bełżec death camp and later Inspector of the SS-Sonderkommandos of Aktion Reinhardt. Before his transfer to Poland, Wirth had been a leading figure in ‘Aktion T4,’ the extermination of the mentally and physically disabled in six so-called ‘euthanasia’ killing centres in the Third Reich.

The role of the ‘T4’ euthanasia program was fundamental to the execution of Aktion Reinhardt, the great majority of the staff in the death camps served their ‘apprenticeships’ in mass murder at the Euthanasia Institutes of Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, Hartheim and Pirna-Sonnenstein, where the victims had been murdered in gas chambers using CO gas from steel cylinders.

The T4 organization took its name from its Headquarters address at Tiergartenstrasse4 in Berlin. This villa had been owned by the Jewish impressionist painter Max Liebermann. His wife Martha, aged 85, committed suicide on March 10, 1943. She was just about to be deported to the Theresienstadt transit ghetto, near Prague. Max Liebermann had passed away on February 8, 1935, in Berlin. Erwin Hermann Lambert, who went onto to build the gas chambers at Treblinka and Sobibór death camps, stated that his first job in T4 was to renovate this villa.

The senior officers in both Aktion T4 and Aktion Reinhardt were all police officers with equivalent SS ranks, and with Himmler‘s approval SS-Non Commissioned Officers had emptied the gas chambers and cremated the bodies of the victims in portable furnaces. The SS-men performed this work wearing civilian clothes because Himmler did not want the possibility to arise of the public becoming aware of the participation of the SS in the killing. During Aktion Reinhardt the SS authorities also supplemented the forces guarding the death camps, by employing former Red Army troops who had been captured or had surrendered to the Germans, mostly ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) from the Ukraine, the Baltic States and the Volga region of Russia. These were trained in an SS camp in the village of Trawniki, 25 km south-east of Lublin. The majority were already anti-Semitic—equating Bolsheviks with Jews—and were ideally suited to the persecution and extermination of Jews.

On November 1,1941, construction of the first Aktion Reinhardt death camp began near the village of Bełżec, 125 kilometres south-east of Lublin, under the stewardship of Josef Oberhauser. The Bełżec death camp became operational in mid-March 1942, and was very much seen as the ‘testing ground’ for all the Aktion Reinhardt death camps. Franz Suchomel, in a post-war interview with Claude Lanzmann, described Bełżec ‘was the laboratory.’

Construction of the second camp, at Sobibór, between the town of Włodawa and the city of Chełm on the River Bug, north-east of Lublin, came into operation at the end of April 1942. The third and last of these camps was located near the village train station of Treblinka11, approximately 100 kilometres north-east of Warsaw. The construction of these two death camps was under the stewardship of Richard Thomalla who worked for the SS-Zentralbauleitung in Zamość.

All three camps shared some common vital facts: they were all situated on or close to main railway lines for the speedy delivery of the victims to their deaths, and they were located in sparsely—populated regions. The true fate of the Jews was initially hidden from them by announcing that they were being ‘transported to the east for resettlement and work’. The Aktion Reinhardt death camps were very similar in layout, each camp being an improvement on its predecessor, and the ‘conveyor-belt’ extermination process developed at Bełżec by Christian Wirth was implemented, improved and refined at the other two camps.

The personnel assigned to Aktion Reinhardt came from a number of sources; SS and policemen who served under Globocnik‘s command in the Lublin district, other SS men and civilians drafted into the Aktion and members of the T4 Euthanasia program.12 Yitzhak Arad quotes in his book Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka that a total of 450 men were assigned to Aktion Reinhardt included 92 men from the T4 Euthanasia program,13 more recent research by the authors has identified a slightly higher total of 98 men, of whom, 89 are known to have served at Sobibór at one time or another.

The Old Lublin Airfield on Chelmska Street was also used throughout Aktion Reinhardt as a mustering centre for personnel transferred from the T4 ‘euthanasia’ institutions in the Reich, to the extermination of the Jews in the Generalgouvernement. The SS-men, police and civilians thus transferred were usually met at the airfield by Wirth personally, on occasions accompanied by the death camp commandants; Reichleitner from Sobibór and Stangl from Treblinka. According to witnesses, at these selections of personnel, all three wore Schutzpolizei uniforms and none of them mentioned anything about their future employment or where they would be based. At the airfield depot the newcomers received Waffen-SS uniforms, provided by the SS-Garrison Administration (SS-Standortverwaltung) in Lublin, but without the SS runes on the right-hand collar patches. The civilian employees from T4, especially the male psychiatric nurses among them were sent first to the SS training camp at Trawniki, for a two-week basic military training course.14

The men selected in Lublin and distributed to the three Aktion Reinhardt death camps were augmented by a company-sized unit of about 120 black-uniformed auxiliary guards who had also been trained at the SS training camp in Trawniki—the so-called Trawnikimänner, usually referred to as ‘Ukrainians’ because they were the majority.

Those who spoke fluent German were appointed platoon or senior platoon leaders—Zugführers or Oberzugführers. The rest were known as Wachmänner. A select few of the Trawnikimänner were given other, special duties, including the maintenance and operation of the engines that pumped their poisonous exhaust fumes into the gas chambers. Among them at the Treblinka death camp were the infamous Ivan Marchenko (Ivan the Terrible) and Nikolay Shalayev.15 In Sobibór another was Ivan Demjanjuk, who eventually faced justice in Germany, and who passed away before his appeal could be heard.

In the course of Aktion Reinhardt approximately 1.6 million Jews were murdered in the death camps at Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka. Jewish property to the value of 178, 045, 960 Reichsmark (RM) was seized by the SS, which represents the minimum known amount. Due to the theft of large amounts of cash and valuables by Globocnik, SS-men, policemen and guards, the true total will never be known.

The Aktion Reinhardt extermination operation ended officially in November 1943, and Himmler ordered Globocnik, who was by then the Higher SS and Police Leader for the Adriatic Coastal Region based in Trieste, to produce a detailed ‘Balance Sheet’ for the murder program. Globocnik produced the requested financial accounts and suggested that certain SS-officers should be suitably rewarded for their ‘invaluable contribution’ to AktionReinhardt. Globocnik received Himmler‘s thanks ‘for his services to the German people’, but made no mention of medals for any of Globocnik‘s subordinates.16

After completion of the extermination work in the Generalgouvernement, most of the men who had served in Aktion Reinhardt were transferred to northern Italy; where their headquarters was in a disused rice mill in the San Sabba suburb of the Adriatic port of Trieste (Risiera di San Sabba). Divided into three SS-units: R-I, R-II and R-III, they operated under the code designation ‘Operation R’ (Einsatz R), still under the command of Christian Wirth. Their primary task was the round-up and deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau of the surviving Italian Jews, and confiscation of their property and valuables. Einsatz R was simply a smaller version of Aktion Reinhardt. Additionally, Italian-Jewish mental patients were removed from their hospitals and sent to the T4 ‘Euthanasia’ institution at Schloss Hartheim in Austria for gassing. The units not engaged in these operations were assigned to security and anti-partisan patrols on the Istrian peninsula.

Wirth turned San Sabba into an interrogation and execution centre where not only Jews but also Italian and Yugoslav partisans were tortured, beaten to death, or simply shot, and their bodies cremated in a specially installed furnace in the courtyard.17 The human ashes were dumped in the Adriatic Sea. There is also evidence that a gas-van was used in San Sabba.

The key members of Aktion Reinhardt mostly escaped justice; Globocnik and Höfle both committed suicide, whilst Wirth and Reichleitner (the second commandant of Sobibór death camp) were killed by partisans in northern Italy in 1944. Both Christian Wirth and Franz Reichleitner‘s graves can be found at the German Military Cemetery in Costermano, near Lake Garda, in Italy.

Amon Göth was tried and sentenced to death for crimes committed in the Płaszów concentration camp (today a suburb of Kraków). He was executed in the former Płaszów Camp during September 1946. Dr. Irmfried Eberl, the first Commandant of Treblinka death camp committed suicide in a West German prison in 1948, while awaiting trial. Only Franz Stangl18 (the first Commandant of Sobibór and second Commandant of Treblinka) and Kurt Franz (the final Commandant of Treblinka) were brought to trial. Both were found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life imprisonment. Gottlieb Hering the second Commandant of Bełżec death camp and Commandant of Poniatowa Jewish Labor camp died on October 9, 1945, in unknown circumstances in the waiting room at the Katherinen Hospital in Stetten im Remstal, Württemberg, Germany.

As for members of the SS-Garrisons at the three death camps a number of major figures; like Karl Frenzel, from Sobibór, and Heinrich Arthur Matthes, August Miete, Willy Mentz, and Kurt Franz from Treblinka, received life sentences, whilst many others received prison terms of less than ten years, but the vast majority of the SS men and Ukrainians who served within the framework of Aktion Reinhardt were never brought to justice.

At Hagen, West Germany during 1965-66, 12, former members of the SS-Garrison went on trial for murdering Jews at the Sobibór death camp. Some received sentences of life imprisonment, some were given only a few years in prison, and some were acquitted.

Former Ukrainian Ivan Demjanjuk, who was brought to trial in the mid-1980’s in Israel, accused of being Ivan the Terrible at Treblinka, was found guilty and sentenced to death, but was later freed following a successful appeal. At the trial a Trawnikimänner identification card showed an entry stating he was posted to Sobibór.

He returned to the United States of America, to his family, but was pursued by the authorities. He was eventually extradited to Germany, and faced justice in a court in Bonn, for alleged war crimes committed at Sobibór. In May 2011, he was convicted of 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder and was sentenced to five years imprisonment. He died on March 17, 2012, a free man in a nursing home in the southern Bavarian town of Bad Feilnbach, after being released pending his appeal.

1 R. Cowdery, & P. Vodenka, Reinhard Heydrich Assassination. USM, Inc., Lakeville 1994, pp. 49 & 63.

2 G. Reitlinger, The Final Solution. Vallentine, Mitchell, London 1953, pp. 105- 106.

3 P. Longerich, The Unwritten Order—Hiter’s Role in the Final Solution. Tempus, Stroud 2001, p. 85.

4 G. Reitlinger, The Final Solution…, op. cit., p. 101.

5 J. Poprzeczny, Hitler’s Man in the East—Odilo Globocnik. McFarland, Jefferson, 2004, p. 10.

6 G. Reitlinger, The Final Solution…, op. cit., p. 262.

7 J. Poprzeczny, Hitler’s Man …, op. cit., p. 76.

8 J. Poprzeczny, Hitler’s Man …, op. cit., p. 95.

9 G. Reitlinger, The Final Solution…, op. cit., p. 314.

10Correspondence between Georg Biemann and the author, November 2020.

11 The village of Treblinka was in fact situated further from the camp than village of Poniatowo, which was the closest village to the extermination camp.

12Y. Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka—The Aktion Reinhard Death Camps, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis 1987, p. 17.

13 Ibid p. 17.

14 M. Tregenza, Private Report Altoting 1972-Michael Tregenza Lublin Collection.

15 Y. Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka—The Aktion Reinhard Death Camps, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis 1987, p. 22.

16 Ibid.op. cit., p. 375.

17 Ibid.,op. cit., p 399.

18 It should be noted that many of the key members in the death camps´ staffing in the three death camps were of Austrian nationality! Eberl was Austrian as well as Reichleitner, Stangl, Wagner, Vallaster etc, and that Globocnik surrounded himself with his countrymen, such as Höfle, Lerch, Nemec, Helmut Pohl and others.

Chapter IIHistory of the Sobibór Death Camp

Odilo Globocnik (Second from Left), Vienna(Chris Webb Private Archive)

The Sobibór Death Camp was located near the village of Sobibór in the eastern part of the Lublin District of Poland, close to the Chelm-Włodawa railway line. The camp was 5 kilometres away from the River Bug, which today forms the border between Poland and the Ukraine.

In 1942, the area around Sobibór was part of the border between the Generalgouvernement and the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, the terrain was swampy, densely wooded and sparsely populated. Sobibór was the second death camp to be constructed as part of the Aktion Reinhardt mass murder program, and was built on similar lines to Bełżec, incorporating the lessons learned from the first death camp to be constructed between late 1941 and early 1942.1

According to Polish railway worker Jan Piwonski who testified on April 29, 1975, in Lublin, he stated that:

In the autumn of 1941, German officers arrived at the station of Sobibór on three occasions. It was in the days after the Germans had started the war against the Soviet Union. The Germans came to Sobibór station on one of those handcarts. During their visit to the station they took measurements of the platform, and the siding leading away from the platform, and then went into the woods nearby. I have no idea what they were doing there. The Germans were in SS uniform and had the skull and crossbones symbol on their caps.

Some time later some very thick doors, which had rubber strips around them, arrived by train. We speculated on what purpose the doors might be serving, and it dawned on us that perhaps the Germans were building something here, especially when trainloads of bricks were also being delivered, and they started to bring Jews over as well. They were doing something or other over there, but none of us Poles dared to follow them to take a look.

Early that winter—in January or February 1942—the Germans arrived at the station from the direction of the Chelm—Włodawa road, bringing Jews with them. They would go off and disappear into the woods. I think these people were living in barracks that had already been put up in the woods. I mean, the barracks in which the Jews were living had already been built by the edge of the woods, next to the railway line. There were around 120 Jews in all.2

In March 1942, following a reconnaissance visit by a small aircraft that circled over the village, a train arrived at Sobibór station, and two SS officers disembarked. They were Richard Thomalla, who worked in the SS-Zentralbauleitung in Zamość, and Baurat Bruno Moser from Chelm. They walked around the railway station, took measurements and made their way into the forest opposite the railway station.3

Jan Piwonski remembered the construction activity starting at Sobibór:

The next morning the Jews had to dig holes, and the farmers from the villages brought poles, which were used to make a fence. The poles were about 3 meters high. After the poles had been put in place, barbed-wire was put up around them and pine branches were woven through the wires. The Jews put up the barbed-wire, while the farmers put the pine branches in place.

The next day a German SS soldier, who spoke very good Polish came to the station cafeteria. He came from Poznan or Silesia.4 When the woman behind the counter asked him what was being built there, he replied that she would find out soon enough, it was going to be a good laugh.5

Another source of information regarding the construction of the death camp in Sobibór came from Z. Krawczak, who had been a prisoner in the Jewish Labor Camp at Krychow, since June 1941. He escaped from Krychow and made his way to Switzerland, where he wrote an account of his experiences during the occupation.

Krawczak wrote that a few SS-men, under the command of Strumph, who was formerly the commandant of the Jewish Labor Camp in Sawin, near Chelm, arrived from another Jewish Labor Camp in Osowa, some 7 kilometres west of Sobibór. They arrived with a group of 120 Jews from Chelm to construct the death camp.

The building material was organized by the Deutsch Horst company, and was transported from the camp in Krychow and from the railway station in Chelm. The management of these supplies came under the authority of the Water Management Inspector, Engineer Franz Holzheimer, who originated from Hannover, and was based in Chelm. The overall construction of the camp was supervised by Moser, an architect, also based in Chelm, who was at a later date transferred to the Technische Hauptamt in Krakau.6

In March 1942, a new railroad spur was built, which ended at an earthen ramp with a buffer opposite the railway station. The camp fence with interwoven branches was built in a manner which ensured that the railway spur and the ramp were located inside the camp, thus preventing passengers at the station from observing what happened in the camp. The deportation trains entered the ramp through a gate and disappeared behind the ‘green wall.’ In the station area three large buildings already existed; the station, the Forester’s House, a two-storey Post Office, which became the Commandant’s living quarter, and a tiny isolated Catholic chapel, of approximately 16 square yards, which was built in 1926. Additionally there was a large Forester’s iron observation tower, built before the war, 30 meters high which stood between Lager I and Lager II.

Jan Piwonski, who worked for the Ostbahn (Eastern Railways) at the Sobibór village station, as an assistant switch-man, recalled the shunting operations connected with the arrival of Jewish transports, in an interview with Claude Lanzmann, in the film ‘Shoah.’

Yes. On German orders, Polish railmen split up the trains. So the locomotive took twenty cars and headed towards Chelm. When it reached a switch, it pushed the cars into the camp on the other track we see there. Unlike Treblinka, the station here is part of the camp.7

There appears to be some conflict here with the number of freight cars the ramp could accommodate, was it 11 or 20? According to a number of testimonies, the ramp at the Treblinka death camp was 200 meters long and could accommodate 20 wagons and the locomotive. Given that the ramp at Sobibór was only 120 meters long, it is more probable that only 11 freight cars and the locomotive could be accommodated at Sobibór.

There was also a sawmill, and several houses for workers. As construction work progressed, undertaken by 80 Jews from nearby ghettos, such as Włodawa and Wola Uhruska—the site was inspected by a commission led by SS-Hauptsturmführer Naumann, head of the Central Construction Office of the Waffen-SS in Lublin. Once the Jews had completed the initial construction phase, they were gassed during an experimental gassing trial. Two or three of them escaped at that time to Włodawa, and informed the Hassidic rabbi there about what was happening in Sobibór. The rabbi even proclaimed a fasting in memory of the first victims, and also as a sign of resistance. Both the escapees and the rabbi were denounced by a Jewish policeman and all of them were executed.8

The camp was in the form of a 400 by 600 meter rectangle, surrounded by a 3 meter high double barbed-wire fence, partially interwoven with pine branches to prevent observation from the outside. Along the fence and in the corners of the camp were wooden watchtowers. Each of the four camp areas was individually fenced in, the SS Administration area (Vorlager), the housing and workshops of the Jewish working prisoners. Lager II was the reception area, and the extermination camp was in Lager III. During 1943, a munitions supply area, Lager IV, was added.

The administration area, which was in the southeast of the camp, was divided into two sub-camps: the Forward Camp (Vorlager) and Lager I. The Forward Camp included the entrance gate, with its sign that read SS Sonderkommando, in gothic letters, the railway ramp, which held 11 cattle cars, and the living quarters of the SS men and the Ukrainians. Eda Lichtman recalled that:

Karl Frenzel, Gustav Wagner, Hermann Michel, Getzinger, Otto Weiss, Bredow, Steubl, Paul Groth, and Hubert Gomerski lived in a villa called Schwalbennest (Swallow’s Nest) Adolf Muller, Richter, Johann Klier, Nowak, the two Wolf brothers, Borner, Graetschus, Schutt, Vallaster, Unverhau Erich Bauer, named their villa Am Lustigen Floh (The Happy Flea)9

Another of the SS living quarters was known as ‘Gottes Heimat’ (Gods Home), they all looked like Tyrolean style houses, designed to camouflage the camp’s true purpose.

Unlike Bełżec, all the SS men lived inside the camp. The Jewish prisoners who worked in Sobibór were kept in Lager I. This area included their living quarters and workshops, where some of them worked as shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths etc.

The reception area was called Lager II. The Jews who arrived with the transports were, after, disembarking, driven inside this area. It included the undressing barracks of the victims and the barracks where clothes and belongings were stored.

The former Forester’s house, located in this area, was used for camp offices and living quarters for some of the SS men, and the place where gold and valuables were sorted and stored. A high wooden fence, which presented observation, separated the main part of the Forester’s house from the area where the victims passed. At the northeast corner of the fence began the ‘Tube.’ This ‘Schluch,’ which connected Lager II with the extermination area, was a narrow passageway, about 3 to 4 meters wide and 150 meters long. It was closed on both sides by barbed-wire intertwined with tree branches. Through here the victims were driven into the gas chambers located at the end of the ‘Tube.’ Close to the entrance of the ‘Tube’ was a stable, a pigpen, and a poultry coop. Halfway through the ‘Tube’ was the barber shop, a barrack where the hair of the Jewish women was cut, before they entered the gas chambers.

The extermination area, called Lager III, was on the northwest side of the camp. It included the gas chambers, burial pits, a barrack for the Jewish prisoners employed there, and a guard barrack. The burial pits were 50 to 60 meters long, 10 to 15 meters wide, and 5 to 7 meters deep. For easier absorption of the corpses into the pits, the sandy sidewalls were made oblique. A narrow-gauge railway with a trolley led from the railway station up to the burial pits, by-passing the gas chambers. People who had died in the trains, or those who were unable to walk from the platform to the gas chambers were taken there by the trolley.10

Before the narrow-gauge railway was established Kurt Bolender recalled:

Upon reflection I can now say that in the extermination camp Sobibór, handicapped or sick Jews who arrived at the camp were taken by horse-drawn cart—it was one of those twin-axled hay carts, like the ones used on the land—and transported from the siding to the wooded area of what was later to become Lager IV. In this wooded area of the camp there was also a grave. I did not see it. I know about it only from hearsay. The pit was not visible from Lager III. Whenever the transports arrived, shots were fired in that part of the camp. I heard those shots.11

Hubert Gomerski, who arrived in Sobibór at the end of April 1942, described the narrow-gauge railway in a post-war testimony:

As regards the narrow-gauge rail track, I can say that it existed until the camp ceased to be operational. It was a small, narrow-gauge track, which led away from the siding at Sobibor station, through the camp into Lager III.

In my estimation, the narrow-gauge track was about 300-400 meters long. Initially, when the camp first became operational, the groups of people who had been selected to go to Lager III had to march there on foot, from the siding: later they were taken there by horse-drawn carts.

Sepp Vallaster was the main person dealing with the rail operation. When Jewish transports arrived, he drove the diesel engine. The railway track was principally used to move incapacitated people from the Jewish transports that arrived. This included the old and the sick, as well as injured Jews.12

SS-Oberscharführer Erich Bauer testified about his arrival at Sobibór and he described Lager III:

When we arrived Lager III had not been completely fenced off yet, certainly not on the right-hand side, and I am not sure whether any fence had been put up through the woods. The gas chamber was already there, a wooden building on a concrete base, about the same size as this courtroom, though much lower, as low as a normal house.

There were two or three chambers, in front of which there was a corridor that, from the outside, you accessed via a bridge. The doors were indeed wooden, they were changed later, when the gas chamber was completely rebuilt. The airtight doors arrived only later. I collected them myself from Warsaw, but that was not until the new building went up.13

During the court case against Karl Frenzel, the jury in Hagen prepared a description of the gas chamber facility, which is regarded as one of the best descriptions of the gas chambers:

About 500 meters west of that chapel, the preliminary works squad put up a building with a gas chamber inside it, a small massive construction on a concrete foundation. Inside the building were three separate gastight chambers of 4 meters by 4 meters, parallel with each other. Each chamber had an insulated door in the opposite empty walls, with one door serving as the entrance, and the other as the exit—for taking corpses out.

The building team had had all fittings installed and a special annexe built by the back gable wall. In the annexe, there was an engine which fed exhaust fumes to kill the Jews. The gas chamber building was situated in the so-called Lager III, which was a fenced yard. It had its own separate fence made of barbed wire.

The building with the gas chambers in it was located in the southernmost part of that area. The annexe with the engine was beside the building with the gas chambers. The exhaust pipe of the huge engine, ‘Otto’, was connected to the system of cables, which ended in the shower nozzles on the ceilings of the particular gas chambers. The engine received specifically calculated settings for the carburettor, and the number of revolutions. With the gas chamber doors locked, it was possible to create such a high degree of concentration of poisonous exhaust fumes from the engine inside the chambers that the people trapped inside suffocated in agony for about 20-30 minutes.

In time the gas chambers turned out to be too small, and the efficiency of the Sobibór camp proved to be too low. The old building with the gas chambers was partially torn down by the Lublin headquarters building crew under Lambert‘s technical guidance. It was replaced by a new massive building with twice as many chambers. Each of them had an area of 4 meters by 4 meters, and a height of 2.20 meters. They were positioned on both sides of the corridor. Each of the chambers could hold about 80 people, if they were tightly squeezed.

Since then, after the buildings work that lasted only for a few weeks, in the six chambers about 480 people could be killed at the same time. The old chambers proved to be impractical also due to too small an exit door, which was used for taking corpses out of the chamber. During the renovation, the door was replaced by a broader ‘pendular’ one. Since then, the working squad of Lager III could more easily get out of the chambers tightly huddled corpses, often extremely dirty, standing next to each other or twisted together, and then transport them to the pits along the narrow-gauge tracks. A special squad of prisoners in Lager III was to clear the chambers of blood and excrement as quickly as possible, before the next group of victims went inside.14

While the basic installations were being made ready to exterminate the Jews, the organization of the SS Garrison and Ukrainians was also taking shape. In April 1942, SS-Obersturmführer Franz Paul Stangl was appointed by Odilo Globocnik, to the post of Commandant of Sobibór, and he arrived in Sobibór on April 28, 1942.

Franz Stangl recalled to Gitta Sereny how he was recruited into the Aktion Reinhardt mass murder program, during a meeting with Odilo Globocnik in Lublin:

I came upon Globocnik sitting by himself on a bench about ten meters away from—and with his back to—the building. There was a lovely view across lawns and trees to buildings far away.... It had been decided, he told me, to open a number of supply camps from which the troops at the Front could be re-equipped. He said that he intended confiding to me the construction of a camp called Sobibór. He called an adjutant—who must have lurked somewhere nearby—and told him to bring the plans.

The plans arrived and he spread them out on the bench between us and on the ground in front of us. They showed a design for the camp: barracks, railway tracks, fences, gates. Some of the buildings—bunkers they were—were crossed out with red ink. ‘Do not worry about those,’ he said, concentrate on getting the rest done first. It has been started but they’ve got Poles working there. It’s going so slowly they must be asleep. What the place needs is someone to organize it properly and I think you are the man to do it. And then he said he would arrange for me to leave for Sobibór the next day-that was all.15

Stangl, after settling in at Sobibór, visited Christian Wirth, the Commandant of the Bełżec death camp, to obtain guidance and experience. Stangl recalled his visit to Bełżec in an interview with Gitta Sereny during 1971:

I went there by car. As one arrived, one first reached Bełżec railway station, on the left side of the road. The camp was on the same side, but up a hill. The Kommandantur was 200 meters away, on the other side of the road. It was a one storey building.

The smell …. He said, ‘Oh God, the smell. It was everywhere. Wirth wasn’t in his office. I remember, they took me to him… he was standing on a hill, next to the pits.. the pits… full… they were full. I can’t tell you; not hundreds, thousands, thousands of corpses… oh God. That’s where Wirth told me—he said, that was what Sobibór was for. And that he was putting me officially in charge.16

After his visit to Bełżec, the pace of construction speeded up. Franz Stangl, an Austrian who had served in the T4 euthanasia program at Hartheim and Bernburg, had as his deputy, another SS man with experience of the euthanasia program, SS-Oberscharführer Hermann Michel, although he was replaced a few months later by SS-Oberscharführer Gustav Wagner.

The initial commander of Lager I was SS-Oberscharführer Bruno Weiss, who was replaced by SS-Oberscharführer Karl Frenzel. Frenzel had previously supervised the prisoners in Lager II.SS-Oberscharführer Kurt Bolender served as commander of Lager III, from April 1942, until the autumn of the same year, when he was replaced by SS-Oberscharführer Erich Bauer. Alfred Ittner was in charge of the camp’s administration, but was later transferred to Lager III. The Ukrainian guards at Sobibór came from the Trawniki Ausbildungs-Lager, located some 27 kilometres south of Lublin. These were led by SS-Scharführer Erich Lachmann up until the autumn of 1942, when Bolender took over this responsibility. The Trawnikimänner were organized into three platoons, led by Ukrainian Volksdeutsche.

In early April 1942, when the camp was nearly completed, further experimental gassings took place—about 250 Jews from the forced labor camp at Krychow were brought to Sobibór for this purpose. SS-Unterscharführer Erich Fuchs recalled this time at Sobibór:

Sometime in the spring of 1942, I received instructions from Wirth to fetch new camp staff from Lublin by lorry. One of these was Erich Bauer (also Stangl and one or two other people).

On Wirth‘s instructions I left by lorry for Lemberg and collected a gassing engine there which I then took to Sobibór. Upon arriving in Sobibór I discovered a piece of open ground close to the station on which there was a concrete building and several other permanent buildings. The Sonderkommando at Sobibór was led by Thomalla. Amongst the SS personnel there was Floss, Bauer, Stangl, Friedl, Schwarz, Barbl and others.

We unloaded the motor. It was a heavy, Russian petrol engine (presumably a tank or tractor engine) of at least 200HP (carburettor engine, eight-cylinder, water-cooled). We put the engine on a concrete plinth and attached a pipe to the exhaust outlet. Then we tried out the engine. At first it did not work. I repaired the ignition and the valve and suddenly the engine started. The chemist whom I already knew from Bełżec went into the gas chamber with a measuring device, in order to measure the gas concentration.

After this a test gassing was carried out. I seem to remember that thirty to forty women were gassed in a gas chamber. The Jewesses had to undress in a clearing in the wood which had been roofed over, near the gas chamber. They were herded into the gas chamber by the above mentioned SS members and Ukrainian volunteers.

When the women had been shut up in the gas chamber I attended to the engine together with Bauer. The engine immediately started ticking over. We both stood next to the engine and switched it up to ‘release exhaust to chamber’ so that the gases were channelled into the chamber. On the instigation of the chemist I revved up the engine, which meant that no extra gas had to be added later. After about ten minutes the thirty to forty women were dead. The chemist and the SS gave the signal to turn off the engine.

I packed up my tools and saw the bodies being taken away. A small wagon on rails was used to take them away from near the gas chamber to a stretch of ground some distance away. Sobibór was the only place where a wagon was used.17

Franz Stangl also recalled another trial gassing, this time conducted by Christian Wirth:

And then one afternoon, Wirth‘s adjutant, Oberhauser, came to get me. I was to come to the gas chamber. When I got there, Wirth stood in front of the building wiping the sweat off his camp and fuming. Michel told me later that he had suddenly appeared, looked around the gas chambers on which they were still working and said, ‘Right, we will try it out right now with those twenty-five work-Jews; get them up here.’

They marched our twenty-five Jews up there and just pushed them in, and gassed them. Michel said Wirth behaved like a lunatic, hit out at his own staff with his whip to drive them on. And then he was livid because the doors had not worked properly. Oh he just screamed and raved and said the doors had to be changed. After that he left.18

By mid-April 1942, the death camp was ready to receive the first transport. It is probable the first transport came from Rejowiec near Chelm, where more than 2,000 Jews were deported to Sobibór. This transport from Rejowiec arrived in Sobibór on April 7, 1942, although it is possible that the first transport to Sobibór was from Kazimierz Dolny, via Opole Lubelski. Wartime sources state that people on the transport from Kazimierz Dolny threw letters, in which they wrote stating they were deported in the direction of Włodawa, out of the train.19

In his book ‘To Survive Sobibor,’ Dov Freiberg recalled the horrors of the train transport to Sobibór in May 1942, and this provides an example of the journeys the deportees took. He made the journey with his uncle Michael, his aunt Esther and his cousin Mirale:

By the time we reached the regional city of Krasnystaw, evening had fallen. The entire crowd was led into a large yard besides some railway tracks. People didn’t know what to do and ran back and forth, looking for water, a place to relieve themselves, a place to sit, to eat something, to rest and to sleep. People lost each other in the dark, and it took a long time until everyone managed to get themselves organized somehow beneath the dark sky. We also found ourselves a place and my uncle gave everyone a piece of bread……..

The whistle of a locomotive engine that was manoeuvring along the nearby train tracks woke us with the dawn, while the mists were still dissipating. It was freezing cold. In the light of day I could see the crowd scattered around the area, with one side bordered by high buildings and the other side by railway tracks…….